Bug 67471

Directly spawning systemd --user doesn't work anymore. A per-user systemd instance is launched when the user first logs in. Access issues should be fixed in systemd-206 (commit 8aa75193662).

I'm marking this as "not a bug", because it's working as currently intended.

Probably I am missing something. Because there was no user session.
Of course I tried to run "systemctl --user start <service>" because I knew I started systemd in my .xinitrc. It did not start the service and the error message was not really helpful, something like "/bin/false returned 1".

I am using Gentoo. I first noticed the issue when trying to run offlineimap per user as systemd-service, using systemd-206.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Probably I am missing something. Because there was no user session.
user@<UID>.service should be started by logind. Nevertheless, there are various issues with that currently.

> Of course I tried to run "systemctl --user start <service>" because I knew I
> started systemd in my .xinitrc. It did not start the service and the error
> message was not really helpful, something like "/bin/false returned 1".
Yes, that's currently not supported.

So with systemd >=205, there is no possibility for users to start own services?
Is it planned to add it back, again? Are there alternative solutions?

(In reply to comment #4)
> So with systemd >=205, there is no possibility for users to start own
> services?
> Is it planned to add it back, again? Are there alternative solutions?

It is possible. user@.service starts systemd --user for the user. You should be able to launch units there. By "issues" I meant that a) probably some bugs lurking, and b) many external things haven't been updated to the new scheme (e.g. integration with display manager is one of them). So things work, but might require tweaking.

(In reply to comment #5)
> By "issues" I meant that a) probably some
> bugs lurking, and b) many external things haven't been updated to the new
> scheme (e.g. integration with display manager is one of them). So things
> work, but might require tweaking.
I am not using any Display Manager. I am logging in on TTY1 and run startx. So where can I read something about the "tweaking" (hopefully only some settings)?

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> > By "issues" I meant that a) probably some
> > bugs lurking, and b) many external things haven't been updated to the new
> > scheme (e.g. integration with display manager is one of them). So things
> > work, but might require tweaking.
> I am not using any Display Manager. I am logging in on TTY1 and run startx.
> So where can I read something about the "tweaking" (hopefully only some
> settings)?

First, make sure that user@.service has been sucessfully started, and that systemctl --user works.

For "tweaking", see e.g. thread http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2013-July/012354.html.

(In reply to comment #7)
> First, make sure that user@.service has been sucessfully started, and that
> systemctl --user works.
I just don't get it to work properly.
I enabled user@.service.

$ systemctl status user-1001.slice
user-1001.slice
   Loaded: loaded
   Active: active since Di 2013-07-30 08:02:33 CEST; 6min ago
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1001.slice
           └─session-c1.scope
             ├─1691 /usr/bin/sddm
             ├─1759 /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /run/sddm//A:0-EXboAB -nolisten tcp vt07
             ├─1769 awesome
             ├─1780 /usr/bin/dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session
             ├─1781 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 13 --session
             ├─1791 /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/term
             ├─1792 urxvt -bg black -fg grey -hc blue -cr white -pr black -pr2 grey -fn xft:Dejavu Sans Mono:pixelsiz...
             ├─1793 zsh
             ├─1869 /opt/firefox/firefox
             ├─1916 /usr/libexec/gconfd-2
             ├─1943 /opt/firefox/plugin-container /opt/Adobe/flash-player/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so -greomni /op...
             └─1975 systemctl status user-1001.slice

$ systemctl status user@1001.service
user@1001.service - User Manager for 1001
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib64/systemd/system/user@.service; linked)
   Active: inactive (dead)

There is no systemd --user running. So my user services don't get started.
Are there any prerequisites I am missing? Is there really no documentation on how this stuff is supposed to work? I found a thread [1] about this issue on archlinux forums, but even with tat info I could not get it work.

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=167115

*** Bug 67694 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Just tried it again, and I now (with systemd-218) have systemd --user started automatically at login. But it does not start my user-services. Starting manually works, but especially offlineimap should start automatically.
The service file:

$ cat ~/.config/systemd/user/offlineimap.service 
[Unit]
Description=Start offlineimap as a daemon
Wants=network-online.target
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/offlineimap -u basic
KillSignal=SIGUSR2
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

###

systemctl --user status offlineimap
● offlineimap.service - Start offlineimap as a daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/home/franz/.config/systemd/user/offlineimap.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

Is there something wrong with the service file? Is something specific needed for this to work? Or is this use case still "not supported"?
I migrated from an own static network service-file to systemd-networkd just to get a working inplementation for network-online.target. Did not help.

Any hint is appreciated.

There is no such target "multi-user.target" in --user contexts... Use default.target in [Install]'s WantedBy= instead...

(In reply to Lennart Poettering from comment #11)
> There is no such target "multi-user.target" in --user contexts... Use
> default.target in [Install]'s WantedBy= instead...

Yes, thx, that fixed my issues! I actually borrowed the file from arch wiki, and several other service files I found (also for --user) used multi-user.target.

BTW.: Is there an easy way to configure service restarting? Offlineimap + GMail make problems when suspending the machine. Restarting Offlineimap fixes this issue. I now created a new service "offlineimap-resume", works. But it would be nice to have something like "RestartAfter=suspend.target". Would that be possible?